I wish this book existed when I was a kid. Nina gave it to me for Christmas last year, and, somehow, I just got to reading it on the train this morning. I’m definitely going to give it back to her in a couple of years. It’s a beautiful, wordless graphic novel that captures the true to fear and confusion, and even hope of the immigrant experience. It’s a world similar to ours that is just slightly off: the fashions are slightly different, the text of the world’s words suggest those in ours, the pets are endearing and scary like ours, but don’t look like ours. Tan‘s drawings are rendered in layers and layers of precise pencils creating the look of a well-preserved artifact. If I had this thing as a kid, I would have spent hours with it lying on the floor of my bedroom. The pages would have been well creased. I’m giving it to Nina as soon as I’m pretty sure that she won’t tear it to shreds…